In 1975 Kit Bennetts was one of the youngest officers ever to serve in the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service. Fresh out of training, on routine surveillance duty one night he followed a big Mercedes from the Soviet Embassy in Wellington and witnessed a meeting between a KGB officer and an unknown man. That man turned out to be Dr William Sutch, one of New Zealand's most eminent citizens. Five months later, after more surveillance and a major sting, Sutch was arrested and charged with passing information to the Russians.

A spectacular trial ensued — New Zealand's only espionage trail, ever — at which Sutch was acquitted, only to die seven months later. Nearly fifty years ago, and with the recent release of the Mitrokhin archives, fascination with the case and speculation about whether Sutch was indeed a KGB mole endures.

Biography- Dr Kit Bennetts

Kit began his career as a pilot and then joined the New Zealand Security Intelligence Service. As a young intelligence officer Kit witnessed a series classic clandestine meetings between the KGB Rezident in Wellington and retired senior Public Servant and Economist Dr Bill Sutch. Dr Sutch was charged in a much-publicized Supreme Court Case in 1975 and acquitted. This is the subject of Kit’s book ‘Spy’ published by Random House in 2006. KGB records provided by a high-ranking defector showed that Dr Sutch was recruited as an intelligence asset in 1950 and was known by the Code name ‘Maori’. Kit went on to work as a Case Officer on an international exchange program. After leaving the ‘wilderness of mirrors’ he worked as the training manager for an international airline and spent nearly a decade as a sworn officer in the Queensland Police Service, retiring in 2011 with two bravery commendations. He holds a PhD from Southern Cross University in Australia; and is a Fellow of the University teaching aviation and business subjects at the Gold Coast Campus and China. Kit has worked part-time at Government House for over ten years and is a speech writer for the Governor of Queensland.

In a career spanning 50 years, Kit Bennetts has worked as a pilot, an intelligence officer, an airline executive, a university lecturer and a police officer. In addition to his pilot qualifications, Kit worked as the training manager of an international airline through the 90s. He is now based at Southern Cross University (Gold Coast Campus)
where he lectures in Strategic Management, Entrepreneurship (in China) and Aviation-related units. His PhD thesis was on the topic of ‘Critical Transport Infrastructure Security – a study of public values, decisions and trade-offs’.